Dawn T

Crypt wendtii, both 'green' and 'bronze'. One of them has also snuck WAY over and has popped out between the rocks behind that Java fern in the foreground. I need to corral that guy when I trim things this weekend.

Maybe some of our members know about who does ship to PR? I'm in the US, so I have no clue!

We haven't had a mom and pop fish store in my area for years. Nearest LFS is about 45 minutes away. I finally started just ordered fish through the mail. Most of mine have been coming from Aqua Huna. 🙂

I've had a lot of issues pop up with fish from the big box stores over the years. Ich being the most frequent visitor. They're the reason I learned the importance of quarantining new fish. When you have to treat ich in a main tank a few times, you learn eventually. LOL Oh, and you're welcome. We're here to help each other, for sure! I've certainly asked my share of questions, too. Fabulous community we have here.

If I can get the hardscape out easily enough to get the part above water that I want to apply the epiphyte plant to, I do @Odd Duck's approach. If I can't do that, I use a piece of cotton thread and tie the plant in place. Cotton thread will dissolve over the long haul, but not before the plant has anchored itself to the hardscape. Haven't had any break down before the plant is anchored. Just make sure it's cotton. Nylon and such won't break down like cotton thread does. @Odd Duck, I didn't realize you could actually use superglue under water! Of course, I have enough trouble with it ABOVE water, so... it might be tempting fate to try under it. 😋

Hey, we've all been there, done that. I used to be a total neat freak with my tanks. I was constantly gravel vaccing, cleaning filters THOROUGHLY (with tap water no less), and scrubbing away any bit of algae. BIG water changes, too. Which, of course, meant they NEVER fully cycled and stayed that way. I had no end of issues and couldn't understand why. Finally had someone tell me "STOP CLEANING THEM SO MUCH". Imagine my shock that you can actually clean a tank TOO MUCH. 🤨 I just wish I'd had access to groups like this and the abundance of sites like Aquarium Co-op's blog at my disposal back in those early days. Best I had access to, besides books, was internet newsgroups, and I could only access that through a long distance phone number to check my email. Remember those days, gang? Man, I feel old sometimes.... 😳 😁

Woohoo! Went to AC's site to see about ordering another intake sponge, checked previous order to make sure I bought the right size (NOT trusting my memory right now), and realized there were 2 on that order. Hm... I only have 1 in use, so I dug through my various sponge pieces and parts again. FOUND IT! Suddenly occurred to me, since I'm going to rotate the old sponge out and the new one in, I might as well just drop the old one into a little 5g plant overflow tank I have in my bedroom. Let the shrimplets loose in there. Nothing in there but plants right now. I'm sure they'll HATE that. 😁

My GH and KH are considerably higher. Hard water here. KH tends to be 80-just over 120 ppm, depending on the tank. GH stays up around 300 ppm. pH right around 7.4 - varying by no more than about .2 above or below that from tank to tank.

My quarantine tank looks pretty much like a very rough version of my show tanks. Whether it's occupied or not, I still have to look at it. 😁 So I also use it as a holding place for extra plants or plants that are transitioning from emergent to submerged growing. I also have a hunk of mopani in there that STILL releases a lot of tannins despite having been in my tanks for YEARS. I do NOT like dark/black water in my tanks, but I tolerate it in there because I figure the tannins are helpful to new fish that have been stressed.

I've always thought the Madagascar lace plant is so neat, but I've also been told repeatedly for YEARS that it's hard to grow and very "delicate" as far as water parameters are concerned. Have you found that to be true? @Beardedbillygoat1975 I LOVE that bowl!

I definitely never had any that looked like the photos you shared in that thread. Question - would low light affect leaf development? It just occurred to me, all the tanks I tried that in years ago had what I would NOW consider to be very low light. Maybe that affected their growth, causing them to shoot straight for the surface?

Do you use the sort of root tabs that are inside capsules? If so, have you tried puncturing the capsule with a needle before shoving them under the substrate? It's the air inside that causes floatation. Puncturing the capsule allows the release of air as you shove them in.

Since I shared it on another thread a bit ago, I wanted to post this here as well. Mind you, this photo is less than 2 weeks after the one immediately above. Check out the Crypt wendtii in the right hand side. Compare it to the photo I posted on March 11th! Who says Crypts grow slowly? I need to thin those out, as well as trim the Pogostemon. I think I'm going to move the Java Fern that's in the front of the tank, too. It's attached to a piece of lava rock, so I can just pick it up and easily and move it. I think I'll move it to the far right where it'll be shaded more by the Crypts.

Uh, I'd suggest going with a different Pogostemon species than the 'octopus'. I have that in one of my 29g tanks and it's ridiculous how quickly and completely it takes over. I have to trim it usually every 2-3 weeks just to keep it from completely taking over the tank. It's not just because Pogostemon species grow fast. It's because the 'octopus' variety puts out those long, very abundant leaves. It's time for another trimming on my tank, so I took a photo to show you. (This tank DEFINITELY needs a haircut this weekend when I do my regular maintenance. It really needed it this past weekend, but I decided to put it off.) Keep in mind that this tank is a standard 29g, so the footprint is 12" deep x 30" long x 18" high. Given your tank isn't that large horizontally, I'd suggest a different species of Pogostemon unless you want the 'octopus' to take over or require a lot of maintenance to control it. It's wild and rather like trying to herd cats! LOL

The trade-off there is that the fine sponges clog VERY fast. I got tired of having to squeeze one of those out constantly. I only feed once a day, and not heavily, so the fact it got clogged so easily drove me batty.

Rotating intake sponges might work. I'll have to order another one, since I just checked and found I don't have any extra ones lying around. It would be easy enough to temporarily place the sponge that needs cleaning into a separate container temporarily to lure the shrimplets out of it. I'm amazed at how deep into a coarse sponge those little buggers can go! LOL

Yep. That'll definitely help things rebalance. Bacterial colonies don't care if decorations are natural or plastic. They set up residence on them. So removing plastic decorations removes whatever bacteria are on them. I've even had plants take up residence on plastic decorations. Have an Anubias right now that's well embedded itself in a plastic decoration. One of those from Petsmart made for aquariums but still, definitely not natural. Apparently Anubias doesn't care anymore than the bacteria do. 😉

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Okay, I'm sure some of you will get a laugh out of this admission, but I'm going to make it anyway. The filter intake sponge on my HOB on the Endler tank needs to a good squeeze out, but I'm finding myself putting it off. Why? Shrimplets. Last time I performed that task, it took way more time than it probably should have, because I found myself carefully removing shrimplets and trying to make sure I got them all before doing the maintenance. Yes, I actually stood in my kitchen and carefully removed shrimplets from a coarse sponge before squeezing it out. Took about half an hour. 😳 So, to my question - I know a bunch of you have shrimp and use sponge filters in one capacity or another. Is there a better way to do this than I've been doing? I don't want to kill the baby shrimp that seem to love the sponge (either by squeezing them or by dumping them onto houseplants along with the water when I'm done), but I need to get that sponge squeezed out good. At the same time, I'd prefer not to spend another half hour making sure I've got them all.

Okay. Let me make sure I understand what you wrote above. So in the last day or so, you've: 1 - Done a water change twice; 2 - Changed filter media; 3 - Removed all aquarium decorations. Am I understanding that right? If so, how much of a water change did you make each time? Also, the filter media, did you COMPLETELY remove the old media and replace it with the new? That's a LOT of change to put a tank through all in one whack, especially if you completely removed the old filter media. Nitrifying bacteria set up residence in the filter media, on tank decorations, in the substrate, and such. Completely removing old filter media and replacing it throws the bacterial balance off. When that's all that's done, the impact can be noticeable but not drastic. Throw in removing aquarium decorations (also a home for nitrifying bacteria) and a water change or two during the same time would throw it off even further. Do you have any bottled bacteria to add to help the tank rebalance? If not, it'll take time for the bacterial colonies to repopulate. How much time will vary, depending on a host of variables. Once the bacteria cycles back to normal, the nitrite levels will naturally drop. That's easy enough to monitor. To avoid disrupting bacterial colonies, it's best not to make more than one change at a time, ESPECIALLY if one of the changes is replacing filter media, which is a MAJOR change. I don't even clean my filter sponges and such at the same time I do anything else that would impact bacterial colonies. If I do filter sponges, I leave other tasks until the next week's tank maintenance. Also, I don't clean all the sponges in a tank at the same time - example, HOB filter intake sponge doesn't get squeezed out the same week I do the sponge inside the filter. Removing rocks, driftwood, or tank decorations is something I rarely do, but I avoid doing that sort of thing at the same time I do anything with my filter, especially if there's more than one piece involved. Only exception is if the tank is unoccupied, and I know a nitrogen cycle disruption won't hurt anything. All of those parts and pieces of our tanks hold bacteria that keep ammonia and nitrite in check. Too much disruption to too many elements at once can throw the bacterial colonies off. It sounds to me that's what you're probably dealing with because you just did what amounts to a major overhaul.

Thanks, @gjcarew. I'm not worried about moving it or touching the rhizome. Just don't want the leggy stuff sticking up there while it recovers, if I can avoid that. It looks pitiful.

I'm not a fan of anything that goes through dormancy, as it usually requires some sort of special care through that. I don't even deal with houseplants like that. So that issue keeps me away from Aponogeton species. I did try them a bunch of years back, a couple of different times actually. Bought those little packs at the LFS that contain like 3 bulbs. Both times, I'm convinced they thought they were supposed to be water lilies. Their stems were LONG and the leaves didn't open until they hit the water surface. I didn't get the submerged leaves like in so many of the photos above. Staff at the LFS told me to just cut the leaves off and the new leaves would grow in submerged. Yeah. Right. In theory. But apparently those plants didn't get that memo. I did try them a third time when I set up a tank about 7 years ago. The bulbs dissolved without ever putting out leaves. I gave up on them.

Wait. One tank? Is that even possible? 😳 😁

Buce appears to be in full melt mode. I guess it couldn't let my Crypts melt alone with the light change. 🙄 Question - can I trim back the Buce? At this point, enough leaves are melting off that it'll be REALLY leggy if it bounces back? I know some plants don't like to be shocked further by trimming when they're already in trouble, while others actually bounce back faster if trimmed back. Is Buce one that will survive and possibly bounce back faster if I trim it? I've never had it before, so I wanted to get input from those who have more experience with it. Advice?

Must be Crypt melt season. Seems a few of us are suddenly seeing it. Suppose our crypts are coordinating with each other via the internet when we aren't looking? 😋